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Resource Vortex

Many organizations, especially small organizations, have limited resources to leverage growth. This can be especially important when that organization is in a crucial growth phase where they are trying to expand and test new markets. In pursuing this, the organization may face bitter-sweet problem: how to pursue growth with the limited resources.

Wasting time is not an option, and neither is ignoring potential opportunities. With this comes the question of how to choose between activities worth the organizations resources. The idea of a “resource vortex” is very helpful in this situation, and even better, it is very easy to implement. So what is it?

Very simply, this vortex is abstract concept of how an organization funnels opportunities and when utilized it helps to make the opportunities resource efficient for the organization. To use this idea, we take all pending opportunities and feed them into our vortex. By doing this, we avoid the problem of ignoring opportunities. Once in the vortex, we are looking for the “black spots” in any given opportunity, where these would signify deal breakers from either end. For instance, if this is with regard to a sales process, if we find that a given opportunity wants a 3 year payback on an investment, but the firm can only provide a 6 year payback, we end the allocation of resources. We don’t need to erase memory of the opportunity, but we stop expending out resources to it. So essentially, send it out of the vortex. We do this with every opportunity, at all the different phases. What is in the vortex, is regarded as active and should be pursued as such. Of course, there will be different priority levels, but the idea of using this vortex helps a organization to manage opportunities and resources that they expend.